


The Dead People

by shannywan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, John in Afghanistan, POV John Watson, POV Sherlock Holmes, PTSD John, Pain, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Therapy, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 11:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2023137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shannywan/pseuds/shannywan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's at a morgue. John's coming home from therapy. What demons find them both?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dead People

John wanted to scratch out his eyeballs with a pen. The therapist’s pen. After he did her eyes first.

  
“John?”

  
“I’m fine.”

  
“Your hand…” Her voice was cautious to the point of walking on ice. John looked down at his hand. His nails were digging into the soft flesh.

  
An hour later, his therapy was finished. He left the building feeling bruised in more ways than one. His hand throbbed to the song of his heartbeat, which was slow and steady. John couldn’t say the same for his mind. Inside, he felt as though all his organs had been scooped up by an external force and left to rot somewhere.

  
He wished he were dead. He really, really wished he were dead.

  
In his car, he touched the spot of skin where he had been marked. Flying death in lead had hit him, but he’d been lucky enough to survive. Ha. Ha-ha. Lucky. A soldier’s way of looking at things, definitely. A survivor’s point of view. John wasn’t a survivor. He was a casualty. And a mistake.

  
_A little bit lower_ , he thought. _A little bit lower and I would be happy. No, not that. I would be nothing. And that would be bliss._

  
As he drove home, the clouds, dark and gloomy as his thoughts, released rain. John liked rain. He always had. He felt as though the water purified the land, washed everything clean.

  
In Afghanistan, it never rained.

  
John’s flat was small, and tiny, and cramped. The walls were a cream colour. Sitting on his bed (also small, also tiny), John wondered how well his blood would complement his walls. In his hand was a semi-automatic. A relic from his time in the desert. Here, in society, the real world; it wasn’t needed. You could buy bread and water without having to kill someone for it. Most people understood this, saw it as logical. John had been that way, before his deployment. Now all his skin could remember was the feeling of being washed in someone else’s blood.

  
The pistol was in his hands. He held it like a child.

 

A child. Now, there was something he would lose. If he died.

  
But who would want a child with him? Hell, who would even want to share this dingy old flat with him? Since his return, London had held no offerings for him; and John was terminally exhausted. He couldn’t go looking for hanging fruit. He couldn’t even reach.

  
He needed a new flat. This one was too expensive. If anything, his blood definitely would not match the walls.

 

The dead body reeked. Sherlock Holmes cut through the abdomen. From far away, he heard the pitter-patter, ratter-ratter of rain.

  
_At least a dead body can’t talk_ , he thought.

  
“Are you sure you don’t want me to do it?” asked Molly H-something. (He only knew her first name for coffee requests, if anything.) “I am a pathologist, after all…”

  
“I can handle it. Fine.” _Go away. I need to concentrate._

  
“Alright…” She paused, fidgeting. Sherlock clamped his gloved fist around an organ. Searched with his eyes. Where was…yes…that was it...yes—

  
“Would you like any tea?”

  
_“The Harvey Dent special. On you.”_

  
“Black, no sugar.” He smiled sweetly. Molly blushed, did a kind of half-curtsy, half-stumble, and went off for his tea. And hers, he supposed. If she wanted any. Of if she needed nutrients to exist; it honestly made no difference to him.

 

Sherlock made a half-content noise in the back of his throat. His posture relaxed slightly. The mourge was quiet and still.

  
Finally. Peace. Quiet. Relaxat—

  
Suddenly, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He growled through his teeth. He could ignore it…

  
A minute later, the phone rang again. Sherlock angrily flicked the phone to his ear. He hoped the caller could sense his frown.

  
“Hello, brother-mine,” chirped a voice.

 

Sherlock stiffened. _Shit. Shit shit shit._

  
“Shut the hell up, Mycroft. What do you want?”

  
“Good god. Has beating corpses not provided the relaxation you were seeking?”

  
Sherlock’s fingers twitched. He ran them through the air, like a pianist.

  
“State your business,” he said, tetchily.

  
“Oh, we’re doing that, are we? _Fine._ There’s a case for you.” There was a pause. Sherlock had the sense that, from the other line, a gleaming smile came to Mycroft’s features.  
“It seems the client loves her specialty too much,” he said, slyly, slowly. “She’s in charge of political prisoner interrogation, by the way. Lots of torture. It’s probably rubbed off on her, seeing as she requested you.”

  
_Oh._   
_Oh._

  
“She’s likely been desensitized by working with you, brother-mine.” Lame. Lame, injured, horrible, sickly. Lame.

  
“Oh, you did wake up on the wrong side of the _cardboard slab_ this morning, didn’t you?”

  
“ _Mycroft_!” he roared.

 

The small morgue rang with his outburst. Sherlock’s lip trembled. The dead body below him looked up with confused eyes. He couldn’t blame him; the shout startled him as well.

  
Silence. Then:

  
“I’ll give you the contact information. Stay in touch. Stay out of trouble and needles and disgusting di—”

  
Sherlock pressed the “End Call” button with enough force to break the phone. Fortunately, for his budget, it didn’t.

  
So, naturally, he slammed the phone onto the metal slab. He felt like a wild animal: muscles taut, shoulders tight, teeth clenched. He was wound up like a toy, played by Mycroft.

  
_How dare he?_ _How_ dare _he?_

 

_I know what I’ve done. I know what was_ done _to me. I remember. I_ know _. I know…_

  
Sherlock’s throat felt tight.

 

_Don’t you dare_ , he thought. _Don’t you dare_ …

He looked at the body below him, and, for a moment, he wished their places were reversed. If he were that man, cold and unmoving, there would be no phone calls. No cases. No cravings in the middle of the night, clawing at his throat, howling through his veins. There would be no-one to bother him: not even his own mind. It would be wonderful.  
Perhaps that was why he liked it down her. Down in the morgue, with the awkward pathologist and the dead bodies. All the flesh was cool, and unmoving, and uncomplicated. Every path was laid out in front of him; all the murders and intentions and causes of death. He could help the world and tell it to piss off at the same time.

  
Most of all, the bodies didn’t talk. They never moved. They were mute. Down here with the forgotten people the living pushed out of their minds—lest they remember what was sure to come, in time—Sherlock could be with people like himself. The dead people. The forgotten ones. Those who had made too many mistakes, and were now left to wallow in them, and their pity. These were Sherlock’s people. And he was one of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Title a kind of sort of not really reference to "The Walking Dead". In the series, Rick Grimes remarks that the zombies are not the walking dead: "WE are the walking dead!", "we" being the humans. So both John and Sherlock interact with the dead--in thoughts, or in real life--but they are also the dead people as well. In this version, Sherlock is pretty angsty, but I want to write here that he is outwardly...not showing that. And John is just miserable. He's attractive, but in his depression, no-one can see this--least of all himself.


End file.
